The present course is designed for students who have completed the equivalent of a first-year Georgian course, such as Howard I. Aronson, Georgian: A reading course (Columbus, Ohio (1990): Slavica Publishers, Inc.) or Kita Tschenkéli, Einfūhrung in die georgische Sprache, I-II (Zūrich (1958): Amirani Verlag). Presupposed is only a command of basic Georgian grammar and a basically passive recognition of basic Georgian vocabularly.

This course is designed to be used either in the classroom or for self instruction. The basic philosophy underlying the course is perhaps currently unfashionable, but it has proven its effectiveness in a number of years of testing. Briefly, the student is exposed to a rich and broad range of Georgian grammatical constructions and vacularly. The more a given construction or word is encountered, the more likely it is to change from passive to active. Still, students who complete the course will not, of course, have achieved active fluency in Georgian. However, they will be prepared to acquire real fluency in teh language after relatively brief stay in Georgia. Thus, the major goal of this course is to give students sufficient background to enable them to live and work in Georgia using Georgian and by so doing to achieve a high level of fluency.

To prepare the student for life in Georgia, there is a series of dialogues, fifteen of which trace the adventures of an American exchange student at Tbilisi University. These dialogues were prepared before the breakup of the Soviety Union and the creation of the newly independent Republic of Georgia's, and thus reflect a Soviet reality that in many respects is no longer valid. yet, Georgia finds herself in a state of transition today and it is still too early to predict what the new reality will be. Nevertheless, the language of these dialogues remains as useful as it was before the creation of the Republic.

To achieve prepare the student for living in Georgia and becoming gluent in the language it is not sufficient to restrict the student's background to grammar, vocabulary, and the colloquial language. The best entree into Georgian society is a knowledge and appreciation of Georgian cutlure. Without such a broad cultural background the student can achieve little. For this reason, the student is introduced to the whole course of Georgian literature, from Šota Rustaveli to the twentieth century. Since poetry is so central to Georgian culture, a rich selection of Georgian verse is included in addition tot he prose selections.

The present course is divided into three major selections: Dialogues, the Anthology of Georgian Literature, and the Grammar Sections. Following there is an exhaustive Georgian-English Vocabularly containing all the words in the dialogues and literary passages. These sections are briefly described below.

The Dialogues, composed by Dodona Kiziria, are designed to exemplify for the student contemporary educated colloquial spoken Georgian. The introductory dialogue contrasts familiar and more formal speech. (Further examples of familiar and more formal speech will recur throughout the remaining dialogues.) The remaining fifteen dialogues trace the experiences of a young American graduate student during nine months as an exchange student in Tbilisi. Grammatical constructions not covered in teh Aronson or Tschenkéli textbooks are described in footnotes or the student is referred to the Grammar Sections. The footnotes also explain idioms and cultural references. All the words in the dialogues can be found in the end vocabulary. A list of the most important and common idioms follows the Dialogues.

The dialogues are all in natural, everday Georgian. We have not eliminated regional forms that commonly occur in the speech of educated inhabitants of Tbilisi, nor have we eliminated constructions that deviate from normative usage when these constructions are typical of the speech of educated Georgians. Russianisms, which are typical of the speech of educated Georgians. Russianisms, which are typical of the speech of many Georgians today, are sued, but sparingly. Because of the naturalness of the language, these dialogues are not "graded," i.e., they do not progress from simpler to more difficult.

An attempt has been made to make the dialogues as interesting and as useful as possible for the student. These dialogues were written just at the start of the period of astonishing changes that led to the fall of teh Soviet Union and the creation of an independent Georgian Republic. Consequently, they do not reflect the ongoing changes and the developments in Georgia today. The dialoguesw still refer to rubles and kopecks instead of the newly introduced laris and tetris; there are references to Intourist and other Soviet realia. In a few instances, primarily in order to introduce newly essential vocabulary items, we somewhat anachronistically reflect the contemporary Georgian situation. Elsewhere we have added footnotes contrasting the earlier Soviety system with that of the new Republic of Georgia. Georgia is clearly in a state of transition today, guaranteeing that any attempts to reflect the current status will soon be as outdated as the Soviet period. So we fervently hope that students using this book in the future will again see Tbilisi hotels and dormitories occupied by tourists and students rather than by refugees forced out of their homes, that contemporary shortages will be replaced by abundance. Despite the dated nature of some of the material in these dialogues, we believe that they will still prove valuable for anyone who goes to Georgia and attempts to communicate in Georgian there.

The student should read each dialogue out loud several times, striving for understanding. The dialogues are not meant to be memorized. The student is then encouraged to try restating the content of the dialogues both orally and in writing and to try to apply the constructions and vocabulary to other situations. If the learner is without a teacher, the aim should be to achieve a level of fluency adn facility without necessarily achieving grammatical accuracy. Again, the underlying assumption of this course is that this basically passive exposure to colloquial Georgian will result in rapid acquisition of active skills when the learner visits Georgia.

The student should make careful note of grammatical constructions discussed in the notes to the dialogues and should also check the relevant parts of the Grammar Sections for further details. Grammatical exercises to reinforce many of hte grammatical points can be found in the Grammar Sections

The Anthology of Georgian Literature begins with a general overview of the historical development of Georgian literature from its origins to the present day. The anthology is divided into two sections, prose and poetry. The prose section is presented in reverse historical order, going from Nodar Dumbaje back to Sulxan-Saba Orbeliani, while the poetry section is in historical order, going from Šota Rustaveli to Ioseb Grišašvili. This order was chosen because it best allowed the student to follow the course of development of Georgian poetry. Nonetheless, students are advised to begin reading the more contemporary poets and work their way back in time, as is the case with the prose passages.

The literary passages are the original, unedited texts with extensive linguistic and cultural annotation. Since some sections may prove difficult for students working on their own, complete translations of all the literary texts are appended.

Students should not only increase their vocabularies through these readings, but also learn to recognize various Georgian literary styles. This is facilitated by extensive introductions to each author, where much attention is paid to questions of the author's stylistics.

The Grammar Sections in no way pretends to be a complete reference grammar of Georgian. Basically, only grammatical materials encountered the dialogues and literary selections of this text are covered. As mentioned above, it is assumed that the student has already covered the grammar in first-year textbook such as H.I. Aronson, Georgian: a reading grammar or Kita Tschenkéli, Einfuhrung in die georgische Sprache. Although there are brief reviews of Georgian morphology, much of the materials presented here is quite new and hitherto unavailable, developing out of questions students raised about the passages.

Examples have been taken from the Dialogues and literary passages whenever possible. For the latter, the name of the author is indicated. When no author is indicated, the example was created by Dodona Kiziria or was taken from Georgian dictionaries or grammars.

English-to-Georgian translation exercises attached to some of the grammar sections are designed to reinforce the materials presented. Since a given English construction can be translated into Georgian in many different ways, the specific construction beign drilled should always be clear, i.e., the purpose of the exercises is to reinforce, rather than to test. Students should not conclude that their translations are necessarily incorrect if they differ from those given in the answer key. Rather, the student should attempt to understand the grammatical principles underlying the answer that is given. To help prevent the students from making mistakes, the English sentences are often literal translations of the Georgian translation. Since there is no English-Georgian vocabularly, the student should either try to use a English-Georgian dictionary to find unknown words, or, more practically, check the Georgian answer for any unknown words.

A Georgian-English Vocabulary, containing all of the words in the dialogues and the literary passages concludes the course. Further details can be found in the Introduction preceding the vocabulary.